Educational Software Design for Young Children with Reference to Trinidad

Numerous application software packages exist that attempt to teach children various educational skills. However, some of these programs tend to have short-comings. A discussion is made of some pros/cons of children`s educational software programs, as well as recommendations for improvement in the design of such programs. Some comments are also made on the appropriateness of several children`s software packages to the curriculum of a particular country. No specific packages would be quoted since general comments would be made that all designers can look at for improving their packages. A study using questionnaires and observation was conducted to review existing software and suggest improvements that could be made to them. The results show that many packages still need a lot of improvements before the software can be extremely beneficial to students. The results of the survey also show that although general "all-country" packages are useful, local developers in each country should attempt to write packages that explore the cultural heritage, geography and history of the individual countries and also customize certain parts of the software that are related to curriculum content. Alternatively, software that meets the needs of individual countries and syllabuses may be outsourced. This can be expensive.